Candle in the Window (38 page)

“He looked uninjured to me,” he
snapped.

“His bruises don’t show,” she
snapped back.

He relaxed a bit. “Did you find a stone to
use on his head?”

“If I had,” she replied with assurance,
“you wouldn’t be seeking him now.”

“That’s my girl.” He slapped her
on the shoulder and she winced. He froze and then carefully peeled
back her cotte. “Ah, Saura,” he breathed, his gaze on
the black marks against her pale skin. “What did the
blackguard do to you?”

“’Tis nothing, William.” She
smoothed his face with her palm.

“I’ll make him pay for every
bruise,” William promised, dipping his rag once more and
wringing it out.

“You’re too sloppy, William.” She
caught at his hand before he could wash her further.

“And you’re too dusty,” he
countered, evading her.

“You’re slopping it down my
cotte,” she complained, but a note of shrill dismay alerted
him.

“Is there something you don’t wish me
to see?”

She didn’t answer, trying to appear relaxed.
She hoped
fervently he wouldn’t wash her
neck, but she’d piqued his curiosity. The rag dripped water
onto her clothes as he wiped her neck clean of its blanket of white
chalk.

“Saura. Holy Blessed Virgin.” He
surveyed her clean neck as it emerged and swore. A necklace of
fingerprints circled her delicate skin and the two dark marks close
to her windpipe told him how close he’d come to losing her.
“Is this his favorite method of extermination?”

“Nay, he also favors poison.” She
raised haunted eyes to his face. “Hawisa was a bitch, but I
pity her her death.”

“Is it sore?” he asked with murderous
intensity.

“I feel a little raspy when I talk,”
she admitted.

“What stopped him?”

That made her smile. “Bronnie. If not for
Bronnie, I’d be dead right now.”

“You mean I owe a debt to that
simpleton?”

His blatant dismay brought a chuckle to her lips.
“Aye.”

“Very well.” William straightened like
a man doing an unpleasant duty. “I’ll care for him as
if he were kin.”

“He’s really a very nice
creature,” she said. “Like Bula. Endlessly
loyal.”

“Unlike Bula, he’s not
intelligent.” He added, “Nor is he endlessly
brave.”

“That’s my Bronnie,” she agreed,
affection and mirth quirking her lips.

“I’ll kill him.”

She jumped at his sudden fierce vow.
“Bronnie?”

“Nicholas. I’ll kill him as I would a
mad wolf.”

“Wait for your father to arrive,” she
urged. “No one would fault you for that.”

“I thought you trusted me?”

“So I do.” A tear glistened on her
lashes, and she leaned
her forehead against his
chest to hide it. “I trust you to care for me. I doubt you
have any such care for yourself.”

“Dearling, listen to me.” His finger
under her chin, he lifted her face to his. “I’ll have
the element of surprise. With any luck, Nicholas hasn’t
realized we’ve escaped, and even if he has, he’ll not
expect to see me inside the battlements. Not now. I’m afraid
to wait too long, don’t you see? Once inside, I can open the
gates to my father.”

“Open the gates, when his mercenaries command
the castle?” she scorned.

“I can do it. I’m not just a great mass
of muscle, you know. I’m crafty and I never forget the first
rule of combat. If I don’t get that gate open, there’ll
be a prolonged siege and that madman will have the chance to worm
his way out. Nay, I want him gone. I want the way cleared for us to
have a life together without fear.”

She closed her eyes in defeat. “You have a
strange way of freeing me of fear, haring off to do single combat
with a castle full of warriors.”

“I can manage.” He grinned.

Her eyes popped open. “Your modesty
doesn’t bear examination.”

“I speak only the truth,” he intoned
solemnly.

Pushing against his solid shoulder, she chuckled
with watery amusement.

“That’s better,” he coaxed.
“Keep your confidence. We only have a little way to go and
you’ll be settled and I’ll be on my way. I’m
going to carry this bucket up for you and leave you the bread and
cheese.”

“You don’t think you’ll be back
tonight,” she said flatly.

“I don’t know.” He lifted her
with one hand under her elbow. “We must be prepared for
anything.”

“I’ll tell you, William.” She
tucked her skirts into her belt in anticipation of the climb to her
perch. “My body is prepared for anything, but I don’t
know how much more bruising my heart can stand.”

William trotted down the path on the
knoll, looking back only once to check that his dearling was placed
out of sight. She hadn’t grumbled anymore about his plans to
capture Cran Castle on his own; she’d been heart-wrenchingly
brave. It made him wonder how tightly she’d have him wound
around her finger when he’d finished disposing of this little
problem. One tear from her eye and he almost tossed his plans into
the dung heap.

Nevertheless, he had a battle to finish. He had to
do it in these last hours of sunlight or he feared Nicholas would
slip from his fingertips. He didn’t ever, ever want to have
to watch his own back again.

His long strides brought him close to the gatehouse
in good time, and he halted and listened. He strained to hear the
sound of many horses’ hooves, but instead he heard only the
whine of the wind off the ocean and the distant barking of a dog.
In spite of his assurances to Saura, he’d hoped to
have his troops at his back. Ah, well, he’d
soon hold a sword again.

Coming to the edge of the motte, he hailed the
castle and got a very surprised call back. “Who did ye say it
was?” the man-at-arms hollered.

“William of Miraval,” he shouted back.
“I fell out of the dungeon, and I’ve returned myself to
Lord Nicholas’s kind care.”

A confused discussion took place on the
battlements, and then another man, the mercenary who commanded the
garrison, and had tossed him into the prison, shoved the soldier
aside. “We’re checking the dungeon now,” he
called. “We’ll let you back in, if you’ve really
escaped.”

William spread his hands wide. “Let me in
now,” he urged. “I have no weapon. I’m only one
man. Surely you don’t fear me.”

For answer, the knight gazed beyond William at the
plain that stretched empty clear to the forest’s edge, and
nodded. “What harm?”

The drawbridge creaked and William laughed inside
at the care with which the rusty chains lowered it. Nervous, were
they? Good. Nervous men made mistakes.

He strode across the drawbridge and stood waiting
at the portcullis as the mercenary examined him through the iron
slats. “I don’t believe it,” the knight muttered.
“How did you escape that dungeon?” He nodded to the
guards and the portcullis rose with awkward jerks. “And what
in the name of good Saint Wilfred made you come back?”

William waited, smiling, until the last barrier had
been pulled from between them, and then he leaped at the
man’s throat. Catching him by the neck, he snarled, “I
came back to kill Nicholas with your sword.”

Taken by surprise, the knight staggered back and
then re
covered, knocking William’s hands
aside. But he wore armor and William did not, and when William
kicked his feet out from under him he went down with a crash.
William had him!

He dove for the sword. The earth-bound knight
fought to keep it in its scabbard. They rolled in the dirt, and
William smirked. The mercenary was smaller, laden with armor, as
easy to defeat as a turtle on its back.

Jerking the blade free, William leaped up and
glanced around. The guards had recovered from their paralysis, and
he thrust out with the point of his ill-gotten weapon. The shouting
at the gate brought men and more men to the fight; they came at him
in a tide. He slashed, using the sword to advantage and fighting
for a shield. He saw one he liked: large, sturdy, wielded by an
opponent who seemed intent on remaining a spectator. In a surge, he
drove toward the unwilling warrior and cracked his skull with the
flat of the sword. He wrenched the shield from the slack grip and
turned.

“Burke!” he bellowed in his
open-mouthed war cry, and the soldiers fell back for a moment. He
managed to get his back to the wall beside the still-open gate. The
outer bailey rang with shouts and the deep, angry barking of a dog,
and William was deafened.

He didn’t like the way these men fought. They
fought as if they’d die if they let him escape. They fought
as if Nicholas would kill them in slow, painful ways if he
outwitted them.

Suddenly, like driftwood caught by a wave, the
guards seemed to ebb away. They disappeared under the gigantic,
hairy beast who attacked them with slavering jaws.
“Wolf!” they screamed, fleeing or falling as their
courage allowed.

“Just what I need,” William muttered.
Distracted, he braced himself for an onslaught, but the great beast
raised its
head from the leading knight’s
chest. “Bula!” William lowered his sword. “Bula,
you magnificent animal, I thought you were dead.” He had no
time to say more, but he glanced out across the plain at the
distant cloud of dust and smiled. “Can my father be far
behind?”

Saura waited in dignified agony. As soon as she was
sure William could no longer see her, she’d climbed out of
the protected hole where he’d placed her and lifted herself
to the top of the highest rock she could find. She didn’t
care who observed her in this deserted countryside; she wanted to
hear the battle. And she could hear it very well. The flat plain,
the lack of obstructions, made sounds carry far and clear.

So she listened. Straining her ears, she heard
shouting. She heard the drawbridge lowered, she heard
William’s bellow, and she heard the sweetest sound in the
world. ’Twas Bula’s bark.

It couldn’t be. She’d heard his fury
and the blow that silenced it.

The barking boomed out again and she started with
the pain it brought her. Could she mistake his bark for
another’s?

No, this was no mistake. That was Bula’s
bark.

For the first time, something stronger than hope
stirred in her. Bula was alive? He was alive. Nicholas hadn’t
murdered him, and with Bula on his side, William had a fighting
chance. The dog was large and loyal, and an almost human
intelligence moved the animal to perform.

If Bula had found them, could Lord Peter and his
army?

They could. At least, she thought they could. She
heard
the distant drumbeat of horses, and she
leaned forward. Was it the soldiers from Burke? As they rode across
the plain, the clank and rattle of armor and the shouting of many
men obscured any individual voices. It wasn’t until they
halted and called a challenge that one voice predominated, but it
wasn’t Lord Peter. Nor Charles, nor any person she’d
ever heard before. Clenching her fist, she strained to to hear,
wondering if William was in greater danger now. What could she
think? What did she want to think? Any army coming to Cran Castle
now must be hostile; ergo, they were an ally of hers.

But in these unsettled times, perhaps the army came
to conquer, and innocent William, caught in the middle, would count
for nothing. He’d better have a care for himself now.

One by one, the men attacking William dropped their
swords and stared out their open drawbridge. “A great
force,” one man-at-arms muttered, his voice carrying in the
sudden silence. The dust raised by the horses speeding across the
plains awed them. “No foot soldiers,” another said.
“A greater force of knights than I have ever seen.”

Neither William nor Bula took more than a moment to
gloat before they returned to their work with sword and tooth. The
dog had positioned himself beside William, snatching at the legs
within his reach. Bodies had piled up around the dog who so deftly
avoided the swords aimed at him. For William’s part,
he’d parried the most obvious blows to Bula and taken
advantage of the attackers’ preoccupation with defending
their feet. The bodies piled deep around his side, too, and now he
watched for a chance to leap out of the circle and find
Nicholas.

Beside him, the drawbridge gave a crack and leaped,
then fell back. Looking up, William saw the mercenary commander
twisting the great wheel that operated the entrance. William roared
with rage, the knight looked down, and smirked. Leaning all his
weight on the mechanism, the lone knight slowly inched the heavy
drawbridge up. Fresh blood coursed through William’s veins,
and he leapfrogged over the groaning men-at-arms with Bula at his
heels. William ran up the tiny stairway to the landing while Bula
stopped halfway and kept the pursuing men at bay.

The mercenary cranked and watched from the corner
of his eye. William reached the top before the knight could close
that gate, and he waved the weapon in his hand. “I have your
sword,” he called. “Come and get it.”

The knight loosened his grip on the wheel and the
drawbridge rattled back down. “I have no need for my
sword.” He snatched a lance off the arsenal on the wall and
pointed it at William’s chest. He charged, and William barely
stepped aside, teetering on the edge of the narrow landing. He
whacked the lance in half with the edge of his blade, but the
knight had already retreated, securing a mace for himself and
swinging it like a man who knew what he was doing.

Its spiked iron head could be deadly in such small
quarters, bludgeoning with indifferent conviction, and William
grinned. He liked this knight. He was inventive, loyal, willing to
fight. “You’re a mercenary, eh?” William
asked.

“Aye.” The mace swung in wide
circles.

“There’s a huge force outside
who’ll soon be inside, and Lord Nicholas, I promise, will be
in no position to pay your wages.”

The mace drooped a bit. “I don’t betray
the lord who pays me,” the knight said tersely, but
William’s gaze was on that mace.

“He’s a treacherous, shifty, lying man
who has deserted friendship and personal honor. You’re not
bound to him, for he’d never do more than toss you to the
dogs.” The mace’s swing diminished to a half circle.
“And the dogs,” William jerked his head toward the
stair where Bula held sway, “are fearsome.”

The sway of the mace creaked to a halt. William
kept his eyes on the spiked head of the mace and eased toward the
gate’s closing mechanism. Jamming the wooden shield deep into
the gears, he effectively disabled it. The mercenary watched, and
William turned to him. “Find me when this is over. I have
uses for fighters such as you.” Turning, he called Bula and
ordered him to stay. “Bula will protect you from my
father’s vengeance, if you protect Bula from the
swords.”

Running lightly down the stairs, William glanced
around. The bailey roiled with armed men astride destriers. He
spotted his father, Raymond, and another man. A leader; big, bold,
shouting the commands that directed the battle.

Who was he?

William had no time to stop and question. Eager
now, he raced toward the keep, knowing he’d find Nicholas
there.

The castle relied on its position on the cliffs for
defense. The outer curtain wall hung almost over the edge on the
three sides; the gatehouse opened onto the plain. Within the walls,
only one bailey surrounded the keep, and William smiled with grim
satisfaction when he found the door to the keep open.

Perhaps that should worry him, but he knew Nicholas
was such a poor strategist, such a dreadful excuse for a knight,
that he’d never planned for the enemy inside the walls. All
his men fought at the gate; all of them. William had seen the
steady stream of mercenaries who emerged from the keep. Only
Nicholas cowered within, surrounded by the weapons
he’d never bothered to practice with; the
weapons that would not save him.

William entered the keep and glanced around. The
abrupt change from light to dark made it difficult to adjust, but
no one lurked in the entry. Running on the balls of his feet, he
mounted the stairs, his sword at readiness. Before he entered the
great hall, he paused and listened.

Nothing. Only the sound of fighting outside
disturbed the silence.

He strode into the room. The fire burned on the
hearth, the table was set for dinner, but nary a soul stirred. All
the servants, all the folk of the castle were gone.

But Nicholas wasn’t. William’s
instincts tuned to the stones of the keep. The entrance to the
undercroft drew him like a magnet; it was the entrance to the
dungeon, too, and Nicholas’s only remaining hope. William
knew Nicholas would try to secure the prisoners he thought he held
for ransom.

Had Nicholas already discovered his fettered birds
had flown the cage?

Moving softly, William started down into the dusk
of the undercroft. A lone torch sputtered in reluctant
illumination. The trapdoor that hid the dungeon lay close to the
foot of the spiral stairs, and William listened for the crash of
its closing. It didn’t come, and he wondered for the first
time if Nicholas really lurked there.

Did Nicholas have a secret tunnel? Had he slipped
out the postern gate? Had he lowered himself into the dungeon and
found their escape route?

William remembered the climb up the cliff and
smiled a most unpleasant smile. That, he thought, would be a
fitting justice.

But rounding the last corner, he came face to face
with his
nemesis. “At last,” he
said, his teeth bared through his beard.

“At last, indeed.” Nicholas lifted the
sword he held and pointed it at William’s throat. “This
time I will finish you. You see, I have the advantage.”

Nicholas gleamed with chain mail. His sword was
fully half again as long as William’s. His belt sagged with
the combined weight of mace and dagger, and he held a shield that
covered him from his knees to his neck.

William laughed out loud. “’Tis not
arms that make the man,” he jeered, “but
ability.”

“Then I shall win,” Nicholas replied,
too quickly.

William snorted. “I could beat you with my
knees in a bucket and my feet in the well.”

The tip of Nicholas’s sword trembled just a
bit. “Too true. If only you had a shield.”

His false sympathy set William’s teeth on
edge. “I climbed the cliff that guards this castle. What
makes you think I can’t get a shield if I need one? The
shield I earned before now holds the gears to the drawbridge open,
and ’twas an investment well spent. Now if I were you,
I’d worry about my own situation.”